In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly invited Vladimir Putin to meet and seek an end to a war now in its fifth year. Mr. Putin’s response was simple: negotiations were pointless unless Ukraine first withdrew from territory Moscow occupies and abandoned its NATO aspirations. The exchange was small, but it exposed a deeper reason why years of sanctions, diplomatic pressure and moral condemnation have failed to produce the outcome Western capitals hoped for.
Many Western diplomats treat the problem as tactical: sanctions must be tougher, coercion more sophisticated, or pressure more cleverly applied. A harder but less comfortable diagnosis is that much of Western analysis has been working from the wrong vocabulary. For two decades the dominant terms used to describe Russia — authoritarian, fascist, totalitarian — carry an implicit model: the state rules by sheer force, the population is a captive mass, and removing one leader ought to collapse the system.
That model is neat and morally satisfying because it explains aggressive Russian behavior without asking why large numbers of Russians might accept, or at least tolerate, the present political order. It misses a more complicated truth: modern Russia rests not only on the instruments of coercion but also on a substantial layer of popular identification and shared historical-cultural senses that predate and outlast any single leader. There is a durable civic current — language, religion, cultural memory — that shapes how Russians see themselves and their place in the world, independently of the particular institutional shape of the state.
This is not to deny corruption, incompetence or real grievances. Ordinary Russians are well aware of the venality of elites and of chronic governance failures. Polling over many years shows widespread cynicism about politicians and distrust of oligarchs. Yet many of the same people who mock local governors and complain about corruption also feel Russia is fundamentally different from Western Europe and the United States: not a failed state waiting for external rescue, but a distinct civilization on its own historical trajectory.
Putin did not invent this sense of separateness; he tapped into it and reinforced it. Russians judge him pragmatically: he has delivered a measure of stability, rebuilt parts of the security apparatus, and presided over visible projects that suggest recovery and pride. At the same time they see stagnating regions, demographic decline, and technological dependencies exposed by sanctions. Their assessments mix realism about domestic shortcomings with a resilient belief that national distinctiveness is worth protecting.
Western commentary often focuses on how power is wielded from the Kremlin downwards — security services, censorship, vertical control. That is one half of the picture. Less discussed is the countervailing grip society exerts on the state: a populace skilled at decoding official narratives after decades of Soviet propaganda, a public that reads state messages with skepticism and does its own accounting of what policies actually cost the average household. This societal scrutiny can make manufactured obedience thinner than it appears.
That dynamic shows in public attitudes. Popular support for the Kremlin can spike in wartime and recede as economic pressures bite. Recent years have seen high wartime approval numbers followed by declines driven not by battlefield news but by rising taxes, squeezed incomes, and slowing private investment. People do not swallow propaganda wholesale; they weigh how policies affect their daily lives and adjust their views accordingly.
Where Western policy has repeatedly misfired is in underestimating how sanctions and isolation are refracted into a story Russians tell about themselves. Economic pain has not always weakened support for the war or for the leadership; often it has reinforced a narrative of a besieged nation standing firm against a hostile West. Sanctions confirm the Kremlin’s claim that hardship is the cost of preserving independence and dignity. Each new punitive measure can harden public appetite for defiance rather than producing a political opening for compromise.
The proper policy implication is not to excuse aggression or to abandon pressure. Rather, it is to change the diagnosis: to accept that Russian power rests partly on consent and identity, and to design instruments that exploit real fault lines rather than assuming the whole edifice hangs by coercion alone. That means targeting elites and interests that matter inside Russia, supporting information and economic channels that expand private alternatives, and aligning incentives where possible to make the costs of continued conflict outweigh the symbolic benefits of standing apart.
Getting the diagnosis right is not a retreat from principle. It is a strategic necessity. Misreading Russia as a purely coerced polity has led Western actors to wait for an uprising or a collapse that never arrives while expending political capital on measures that mostly validate the Kremlin’s narrative. Recognizing the mixed roots of Russian resilience — repression plus genuine social currents of identity and grievance — allows for pressure that is narrower, smarter and more likely to produce leverage.
None of this changes the moral clarity of condemning invasion or of supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty. It simply reframes the problem so policy can be more effective. Western states can continue to hold Russia accountable while also acknowledging that many Russians are not merely passive victims of a tyrant but participants in a political compact that will outlast him. If the West insists on a model in which Russians must be rescued from themselves, it will keep wondering why its remedies fail.
Sajid Farid Shapoo is a senior Indian security official, a three-star general, and holds a PhD in security studies from Princeton University. He writes regularly on geopolitics and international security; the views here are his own.
